


an accumulation of anguish

by SiderumInCaelo



Series: susceptible of love and sympathy [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Christmas, Christmas Presents, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Introspection, Literary References & Allusions, Loneliness, Movie 2: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Past Child Death, References to Frankenstein
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21906712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiderumInCaelo/pseuds/SiderumInCaelo
Summary: In 1914, Leta receives exactly one Christmas present: a copy ofFrankensteinfrom Professor Dumbledore.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore & Leta Lestrange
Series: susceptible of love and sympathy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1577764
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8
Collections: Platonic Teacher-Student Relationships





	an accumulation of anguish

**Author's Note:**

> I used the 1831 edition of _Frankenstein_ for this fic, which can be found [here](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42324/42324-h/42324-h.htm), courtesy of Project Gutenberg.
> 
> The title is taken from this line in the novel: "Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it."

It wasn’t like Leta had had very high hopes for this Christmas.

In fact, she couldn’t remember having had high hopes for _any_ Christmas. When she had been a child, Christmas meant stilted celebrations with a revolving cast of extended family, none of whom had any interest in Corvus Sr.’s barely-legitimate daughter. It had been a relief to start at Hogwarts and be able to stay there for every holiday, though her absence had seemed to be all the excuse her relatives needed to stop remembering to send her even a card. But it was fine, she had told herself insistently, because she had made friends with Newt, who was a million times better than all of her family put together. He had usually gone home for Christmas, but he had always remembered to send her something.

But then she had ruined that, like she ruined everything, and gotten Newt expelled. She had spent most of December agonizing over what, if anything, she ought to get him this year – nothing seemed appropriate, and she didn’t know if he would want to hear from her anyway. Finally, she ran out of time to send him anything, though she told herself that she could always send a late present if she got something from him.

But Christmas morning came and there was nothing from him, and it hurt even though she didn’t deserve anything else.

There was nothing from her father either, and that she hadn’t been expecting. He had always gotten her something, even if it was totally impersonal – dress robes in a color she hated and a decade out of style, an overly ostentatious stationary set – but this was the first Christmas since she turned seventeen, she realized. Apparently he’d decided that now she was of age, he no longer had to acknowledge her existence.

In fact, there were no gifts waiting for her at all, not even a card. She hated the way her stomach twisted at the realization – it felt spoiled and whiny to complain about not getting presents, even to herself, but it wasn’t about the gifts, not really.

She did her best to enjoy Christmas day anyway. She took advantage of the absence of most students to claim the best chair in the common room and flipped through the new edition of _Witch Weekly_ , bundled up and went for a walk in the snow, watching her breath freeze in the cold air, and took a ridiculously long, hot shower when she got back, but the whole time she was dogged by the thought of how alone she was, even on a holiday of family and togetherness.

Not even her melancholy mood could ruin Christmas dinner, though. The decorations in the Great Hall were beautiful, with huge, bushy trees dripping tinsel and ornaments, and candles casting soft, flickering light everywhere. The food was as rich and comforting as always, too.

Still, there was a certain sense of relief, once the Feast was over and she was comfortably full, at the prospect of going to bed and having the day be over.

She’d gotten most of the way down the corridor leading out of the Great Hall when she heard a voice call her name. She turned around and saw Professor Dumbledore walking towards her.

Neither of them had really acknowledged what she had told him about Corvus. Leta had scarcely been able to think of that conversation without feeling an overwhelming mixture of gratitude and embarrassment, and so had defaulted to acting as if it had never happened. (If she had started putting more effort into her Defense homework, well – N.E.W.T year grades were important, that’s all.) Dumbledore, presumably following her lead, had never tried to raise the subject again, or indeed done anything but treat her as just another student. 

Until now.

Leta fought not to fidget as he drew closer to her, but she thought some of her hesitance might’ve shown on her face anyway, because he said, “I won’t keep you long. I just had something to give you.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin, rectangular object, offering it towards her. She took it, noticing the wrapping paper as she did. The pattern was of dark green trees, with shimmering snow drifting down in front – it was like a more muted, sophisticated version of the Slytherin green and silver, she thought absently.

“It’s nothing much,” she realized Dumbledore was saying, “but I hope you’ll enjoy it.”

For one treacherous moment, Leta thought she might cry. “Thank you,” she managed, her voice coming out thick.

He looked at her with that piercing gaze of his and Leta braced for him to ask why she was overreacting to a simple Christmas present – but all he said was, “Merry Christmas, Leta.”

“Merry Christmas, sir,” she returned, and he turned to leave.

Leta continued towards the dungeons, keeping the package clutched to her chest. Only once she was back in her empty dormitory, settled on her bed, did she unwrap it.

She peeled the paper off carefully – it was too beautiful to tear – then folded it up and set it aside. Inside was a book; unsurprising enough, given its shape and stiffness. The cover read _Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus_ , by Mary Shelley; it wasn’t a title she recognized. She opened the front cover and found a card tucked inside, a drawing of a robin on a snowy branch printed on the front. She flipped it open and read the message inside, written in a narrow, slanted script:

> _Leta,_
> 
> _I found I had an extra copy of this book recently, and thought you might like it – I do hope you haven’t read it before. It was published nearly a century ago, and the author, a Muggle, wrote it when she was only nineteen._
> 
> _Merry Christmas,_
> 
> _Professor Dumbledore_

Leta gently ran her fingers over the words, feeling the slight indents the pressure of the quill had left. It may have just been a spare book he’d had lying around, but he had still found it and thought of _her_ , had even taken the time to wrap it and include a card – in the face of her otherwise lonely Christmas, it was extraordinary.

She sat frozen, lost in thought, for a few moments, then mentally shook herself. She put the wrapping paper and card away in a dresser drawer, settled into a more comfortable position, and turned to the first page.

_You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday; and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare, and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking…_

* * *

She hadn’t gotten very far into the book before tiredness took over and the words became little more than shapes on a page, but she picked it up again the next morning.

She found the novel strange at first, not least because she wasn’t entirely sure which parts were meant to be fantasy – surely Muggle scientists didn’t really build monsters out of body parts, did they?

But she forgot those concerns once she reached the part where the creature awoke.

_I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart._

As soon as she read that line, she decided that she intensely disliked Victor Frankenstein. She suspected, given his pitiful condition in the earlier chapters, and the prior death of his mother, that she was supposed to feel some sympathy for him, but she couldn’t. He had practiced _necromancy_ , the idiot, which all but the most unsavory of wizards knew to steer clear of, and had only gotten cold feet after it had worked. And he hadn’t done anything useful upon realizing the error of his ways, just had a months-long breakdown, she thought disdainfully.

Her antipathy toward Frankenstein only grew stronger as she kept reading, especially once she reached the section narrated by the creature. Far from being a mindless Inferius, capable only of violence, he was intelligent and curious, even compassionate. His delight at observing a family spend time together reminded Leta of the Easter holiday she had spent with Newt and his family, and the strange mix of want and discomfort she had felt at watching them do ordinary things like eat breakfast together.

Though at least the creature had the solace, however small, of not having done anything to deserve his eventual rejection.

Then the creature explained to Frankenstein why he had murdered William, and Leta realized – the creature was like her. He was abandoned by his creator, and so was she. He returned rejection with anger and viciousness, and so did she. He killed a child because it was loved and he wasn’t, and so did she.

She almost slammed the book closed then and there. Who would want a story where they’re the monster?

But she had to know how it ended. Maybe the creature would find someone who understood him.

So she read on, but it was just more tragedy. Frankenstein refused to make the creature a companion, and while Leta reluctantly agreed with him – making another unwanted being would go past foolish to downright malicious – it didn’t lessen the cruelty of refusing a lonely person what may have been his only opportunity for companionship, and she understood all too well when the creature killed Elizabeth in retaliation. Why _should_ Frankenstein have gotten to enjoy the very thing he denied his own creation?

But vengeance didn’t make the creature happy. 

_My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and, when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change, without torture such as you cannot even imagine._

It just made him hate himself even more, to the point where the only future he could see was his own death.

She closed the book after finishing the last line, and stared absently ahead as she thought. Why had Dumbledore given her _this_ book? As a warning to not let her pain and jealously lead her once again into violence, lest she too meet a premature, lonely death? 

It was a fair enough moral, but it seemed an uncharacteristically cruel message for him to send, especially through a Christmas present. She thought back to the conversation they’d had about Corvus, and how he’d said that she didn’t need to become a mother to prove that she’s a good person.

Hadn’t Frankenstein’s true mistake not been creating a new life, but refusing to care for it afterwards? Perhaps the book was meant as an indication that she made the right choice in having an abortion, rather than having a child she may not have been able to properly nurture.

Or maybe he just thought it was good book, and she was reading entirely too much into it.

Whatever he had or hadn’t meant, she was touched by the gift, and she went back to her dormitory to safely stow it in her trunk. While she was there, she grabbed her stationary set – she had a thank you card to write.

**Author's Note:**

> “It’s the quintessential teenage book. ‘You don’t belong. You were brought to this world by people that don’t care for you and you are thrown into a world of pain and suffering, and tears and hunger, and you learn to talk…’ It’s an amazing book written by a teenage girl. It’s mind blowing.” - [Guillermo del Toro](https://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/guillermo-del-toro/257061/guillermo-del-toro-on-frankenstein-pinocchio-the-strain-more-at-fantasia-fest) on _Frankenstein_


End file.
